EDITORIAL: A 'normal' winter for a change?

Could this winter turn out to be a fairly boring winter with normal snowfall and no big storms?

Wouldn't that be great?

We've just gone through two winters that were anomalies, at least of the recent past. In 2012, we only had 7.4 inches of snow (and it seemed like less than that). The biggest storm was actually the previous October, the Halloween storm that shut down power to 700,000 or more electric customers.

In 2011, it seemed like it never stopped snowing, with a total of 41.8 inches (including that October storm). Both those numbers come from weather-warehouse.com.

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These two crazy years compare to an average of 24.8 inches of snow between 1971 and 2000, according to "Dr. Mel's Connecticut Climate Book," by the late, beloved Mel Goldstein, longtime meteorologist for WTNH-TV.

So far this year, we've had two decent shovelable storms (one actually in the last days of 2012) and a few that were more annoying than anything else. In other words, kind of a traditional winter in Connecticut.

Of course, we still have February and March to go. We could still be hit by a whopper. Or more of this week's balmy temps that hit the 50s.

Skiers, plow drivers, children who get out of school and a few others who love cold and ice may be disappointed that this winter seems to hark back to those of the 1980s and '90s. But for those of us who have to clear off our car and nervously drive back and forth to work, the fewer times we have to drive in snow and ice the better.